The present invention relates to a handpiece for laser apparatus. The invention is particularly useful for surgical lasers, and is therefore described below with respect to this application.
Surgical lasers, particularly CO.sub.2 lasers, are presently used for cutting or ablating tissues in various confined body cavities. One recently-developed application of lasers is in the treatment of snoring. A common cause of snoring is a long uvula (the small, conical, fleshy mass of tissue suspended from the center of the soft pallet above the back of the tongue) and redundant soft pallet that vibrates during respiration. Occasionally, snoring is accompanied by an enlargement of the tonsils. In the surgical treatment of snoring, the surgeon performs a vertical resection of the soft pallet on both sides of the uvula, sparing the uvula itself, with further ablation with the laser of the lateral and inferior sides of the uvula to create a "new uvula" that is higher and smaller. Surgical lasers are also used for reshaping or removing the tonsils (tonsillectomy), and for removing or reshaping posterior parts of the tongue (glosectomy).
Such applications of surgical lasers involve a number of troublesome problems. One problem is to provide clear viewing of the working area by the surgeon. Another problem is to protect sensitive tissue in this area from undue heat or from exposure to the laser beam. Further problems are to evacuate the vaporized tissue and to prevent contamination of the lens included in such apparatus for focussing or defocussing the laser beam on the working area. While the foregoing problems are particularly troublesome with respect to the above-described applications for surgical lasers, they are also present to some degree in many other applications of surgical lasers.